holiday season

Happy New Year! While the Android Community team will be enjoying some down time today, we did want to mention a few things. Aside from wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2014, we have to say thank you for 2013. After all, without you we would not be able to do what we do. We have a few posts planned for today that take a look back at the year, but quite honestly, we are pretty excited about the year ahead.

For many, celebrating on New Year's Eve means watching the ball drop at midnight. In the past that meant either being in Times Square or sitting in front of a television. But thanks to mobile tech, those same rules no longer apply. This isn't the first year there has been a mobile Times Square Ball Drop app, however the official app from Countdown Entertainment has been updated for 2013/2014.

The holiday season is upon us, and while we hope you are all enjoying some downtime with family and friends, we suspect there may be some tech related questions heading your way. While not everyone will be getting an Android smartphone or tablet, it seems to reason that at least a few of our regular readers will be hit up with app related questions from new users. The Play Store is full of apps and we are sure you have your favorites, but we also thought some suggestions may be helpful.

The holiday season is now in full swing. We hope that means spending some quality time with friends, family, and loved ones in general, but we suspect it also means many of our regular readers will spend some time helping that same group of people with their new gadgets. Or for that matter, their old gadgets that have been neglected over time.

Google offered up a few holiday themed goodies this year, and what better day to round those up than Christmas Eve. The regular news is slow, you are likely getting ready to spend some time with loved ones, and well, some of these items may help to keep the younger ones amazed. Here we are looking at the AutoAwesome Snow and Year in Review video as well as the Santa Tracker app and getting a call from Santa.

We've been seeing plenty of companies releasing holiday-themed videos lately, including one particularly unsettling commercial from the likes of Samsung. Today it's the Android team's turn to show off a holiday video of their own, and rest assured, there isn't any uncomfortable innuendo between Santa and Mrs. Claus to be found. Instead, the holiday video the Android team put out is rather touching, and may even make you shed a tear if you aren't careful.

Howdy folks, it's your friendly neighborhood Android blogger here, hoping today finds you in the company of family and friends. I'd like to wish you a Merry Christmas from everyone here at Android Community, as well as a Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, et all. If you don't celebrate any kind of winter holiday... um, good morning.

Halloween is just a few short days away (scary noises) and we have a few treats we thought we'd share before the weekend gets under way. First off we have some Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich carved right into a pumpkin directly from our friends at Google thanks to their @Android twitter page, then we've spotted a few more Android pumpkins and even a few Halloween games and deals. Be sure to follow down past the break and see all the spooky details.

Really. They don't even care at all. Why else would they only offer up a $100 discount to their Bell Samsung Galaxy Tab when the fabulous businesses like US Cellular who is doing a Valentine's Day 2 for 1 deal, or Sprint who slashed their Tab down to a mere nubbin - $300! Clearly Canada plans on taking some of my stash of old Tabs that I requested upon the announcement of the new Tabs at Mobile World Congress.

Those super cool developers of CyanogenMod are whipping up a new version as we speak, XDA letting us know that there's an unofficial alpha version available for Nexus S now. Christmas day there was a tweet from the folks at Cyanogen that said they'd not released an official version of 7 because they'd not fixed the camcorder yet. Later that day, a fix did indeed occur. XDA Developers forum member Koush released an alpha version with the fix, the real deal undoubtedly now heading up quick.